| Video news releases (VNRs) have been called the news releases of the 1990s. They are the electronic version of traditional print press releases, no better, no worse. The only difference is that they are allegedly more powerful and have a greater impact on their intended audience.;VNRs are high-technology products. They are delivered free of charge by news sources to television newsrooms. Since they are available for "unrestricted use" and are produced mostly by experienced former television personnel, VNRs usually sound and look like ordinary news reports. Television news people, offered a whole new avenue of information access which provides picture-rich, interesting and entertaining video excerpts, are sometimes tempted to run the free videos without identifying their sources. As a result, VNRs have gained widespread use. Thousands of business and educational, medical, governmental and other non-profit organizations have learned to deliver messages to various audiences through VNRs.;A thorough qualitative and quantitative examination of the video news release, its history and growth and the social, political, economic and technological context of its growth, was presented in the dissertation. A market analysis and a discussion of the problems and future development of VNRs was also provided.;The Chaffee-McLeod coorientation model was applied as the study's analytical framework, to provide an approach for examining differences/agreement in perception of VNRs between news directors and public relations practitioners. As in previous studies of press relations, journalists overestimated differences in viewpoint between themselves and public relations personnel.;Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted to complement the quantitative approach of the project. Interviews with three television news journalists and three public relations practitioners in Columbus, Ohio, were compared and analyzed to supplement the findings of the quantitative survey.;The quantitative section relied heavily on a scientifically conducted survey of both public relations practitioners and television news directors throughout the United States. Major findings included the demographics of public relations practitioners/news people, their organization sizes and budgets, numbers of VNRs produced/used, preferred VNR topics, criteria for airing of VNRs, most preferred distribution format/channel, and the agreement, congruency and accuracy of the two groups on VNR-related topics. |
